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So many entrepreneurs fail at their business because they fail to connect to their own brand. Beyond the market, branding is also about finding what matters to you most. Andrea Shillington of Brands for the Heart believes in that and teaches us ways to find the brand that is in our hearts. She shares the importance of finding the right branding and being connected to it. Inspiring people to look for their own heart-centered purpose, Andrea talks about how standing for what we are meant to do could lead us to the right kind of success. She also gives us a peek into what her ideal candidate is, pointing out how a great desire to leave a mark into the world is most inspiring.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Andrea Shillington on Creating Brands For The Heart

I have on the Founder of Brands for the Heart. She’s also a business soul architect. Her name is Andrea Shillington. On a thirteen-year world tour as an international brand strategist, she develops strategy for Fortune 500 and other famous brands, from the UAE Federal Government to AstraZeneca to seven-star hotels, all prior to launching Brands for the Heart. Her talents, her insight, and heart combine to create a winning combo that brings a unique perspective to the entrepreneurial audience. She’s all about making a difference while delivering $1 million brand position for those she serves. Her work has been featured in Entrepreneur and Good and Spring Wise to name a few. Welcome, Andrea.

Thank you so much for having me here.

How did you get started? What made you launch Brands for the Heart? What was on your mind and why that name?

I started my career in the Fortune 500 big branding agency space where we would charge $250,000 at least to do a brand for a big massive company up to $1 million. I went through my own personal soul quake where I ended up coming back to Vancouver. I was living abroad in Dubai and London doing that global international work. I came back to Vancouver where I live now, and I started meeting all of these amazing entrepreneurs that were heart centric that wanted to change the world and have these beautiful ideas to genuinely move humanity and our planet forward. They would go onto 99 Designs and buy a logo and slap it on everything. It would break my heart because I am like, “That’s not how you brand.” These people are the kinds of businesses our world needs.

I’ve created Brands for the Heart to help these entrepreneurs create brands that will change the world. The reason why I call it Brands for the Heart is because we all have this heart-centered purpose inside of us. If we all stand in that thing that we’re meant to do, and if you’re a lemon tree, you’ve got to grow into being a lemon tree. You can’t become an apple tree. If we all stand in that seed of what our heart is here to create in the world, then our world will be a completely different place. Brands for the Heart is about doing what’s in your heart and then doing it for the other hearts in the world. For me, that’s where the name stems from.

It’s so interesting to me because people do go to these design sites and all of a sudden, they have these things and they think, “I’m done.” Why don’t you define what a brand is and what it’s supposed to do?

Brands For The Heart: Branding is not just about figuring out what market you’re going to make the most money in, it’s really about aligning your business to your soul’s calling.

You talked about being a business soul architect. To me, your impact that you’re here to have in the world is in your story. Branding is not just about figuring out what market you’re going to make the most money in, it’s about aligning your business to your soul’s calling. Sometimes a lot of people come to me and they feel like they’re unfocused, unclear, and bumbling around. In my experience, after doing this for years, because they aren’t clear on what their life’s purposes, they’re looking at other people and saying, “I want to be like Marie Forleo or I want to be like Tony Robbins,” but you’re not Tony Robbins or Marie Forleo. You have your own unique thing to create in the world. Creating a brand has evolved since what I originally understood it to be. It’s evolved into stepping into your soul’s calling and creating something for the people of the world that will move humanity forward in a positive direction.

Who’s an ideal client for you? Maybe some of our readers are resonating with you. How do you know if they’d be a good client for you?

For me, an ideal client is someone who feel they’re an ocean pouring through a sink tap. They’ve got this massive desire to serve and lead from their heart and yet they are like, “How do I communicate this in the world?” There are people who have done a lot of personal developments and they’re the type of person who maybe has been a serial entrepreneur, has had success before, but is ready to step into being a Heartrepreneur. Being someone who is heart led, who is stepping into the legacy that are meant to leave in the world. I want to do that not in a small way, but are ready for stepping into that purpose in a big way, wanting to create a global impact with that purpose and our visionary thinkers.

When you’re looking at someone’s brand, what do you start with? What process do you use? How do you formulate these $1 million brands?

In a lot of spaces, what I see is everyone doing the same things. Life coaches all talk about, “Live your dreams.” If I go into any market, I’m like, “I’ve seen that before.” For me, it’s about helping people to rise above the noise, even if you’re in a competitive industry. For example, health. I worked with a successful health coach and it’s a very crowded market. How do you bring your heart centric work? How do you bring your big legacy message to the world and also rise above all the clutter that’s going on out there? To me, that’s about how you create a very visionary $1 million brand proposition. It’s by not doing what everybody else is doing. It’s by talking about the common enemy. It’s about creating a movement, not just another business.

The way forward for creating change and creating successful businesses is in creating impact and creating a movement. You see Dove, you see Pepsi and you see all these big global brands doing this. I’ve been saying this for years. You’re starting to see it become like a mass market thing where businesses are aligning themselves with impact. They’re aligning themselves with a higher cause. I help people to tap into what is that higher cause, what is that differentiated message, so that they can create the impact that they’re meant to make in the world. I get into the nitty-gritty with my clients too, because a lot of entrepreneurs will have these grandiose ideas but they’re not grounded, intangible, and measurable results in the world. I try to get my clients to think about their impact specifically. How many people do you want to impact and what specific cause or what specific metrics are you trying to change in the world?

It’s interesting because there was so much wonderful marketing by larger companies and I do think it’s time for entrepreneurs to shake it up. People’s websites look the same. Their messages look the same. They stand up at networking meetings and they all sound the same and they sound scripted. Let’s say somebody decides, “I’m going to go into this. I want to have branding. I want to do some cause marketing. I get all of this.” Does it help them financially?

Yes, it does. I am going through my own rebrand and so I’ve been collecting a whole bunch of my testimonials. I had one business who didn’t even change their design at all and they went from $600,000 to $1.4 million just in their eCommerce store in one year. I had a health coach who rebranded and she was able to double her income. I’ve had another client who launched her business. In the first 40 days, she has already secured an investor. She landed a big six-figure sponsorship deal. When you’re clear about your message and your heart is 100% in alignment with what you’re doing, there’s no stopping you. What happens is when people come to me, they’re bumbling, they’re all over the place, and they don’t feel like they have this convicted clear path on why they’re here and what they’re meant to do. When they click into that, it absolutely impacts their bottom line.

A lot of people get confused and they’re saying, “Should I invest? Should I get branded? What does that even mean?” I wanted to make sure that we answer those questions and also talk about the ROI because I don’t think that people are understanding this.

There are a lot of people out there that do branding. One of the beautiful things about the internet is everyone can launch a business tomorrow. That’s also the Achilles’ heel of the Internet because it means everyone can say that they’re a branding expert. Everyone can say they’re a health expert and because everyone’s copying everyone’s message, it becomes difficult to know who is the actual expert here.

The one thing that I would advise your readers is if they want to get those bottom line results, they have to go deep in the process. They have to be willing to let go of maybe products. Branding is a painful process for many, where if you go through the branding process and you haven’t anything that’s painful, then it probably isn’t going to be a solid brand in my experience. You’ve got to be convicted, solid, and polarizing on your beliefs and what you stand for. I see businesses going wrong is continuing to stay in that vanilla safe space.

Brands For The Heart: Branding is a painful process for many.

Tell us how we can connect with you and contact you. I’ve not found anybody else that does branding in the way you do it. I’ve not found anybody else that’s aligned with the whole Heartrepreneur movement. I would love for the readers to connect with you.

I love what you’re creating. When I learned about who you were, I was like, “I have to know everything about you. You’re spot on as far as I’m concerned.” You can reach me at BrandsForTheHeart.com. You can jump on a call with me, you’ll get the connection details through our website. There’s also an amazing quiz that you can determine how effective is your marketing message right now for where you’re at in your business. There are lots of resources and tools and freebies for you. I tried to design our site in a way that it’s palatable and you can receive value even if you can’t afford to work with me. I wanted to make it accessible for those people who are genuinely trying to make our world a better place.

I feel having gone to folks’ websites, having people come to my live events and hear them stand up in the room and share what they do, there’s too much of the same old. We’ve got to make a shift. We’ve got to make a change. I feel like I’m introducing our readers to somebody who couldn’t be more aligned than Andrea Shillington. Andrea, thank you so much for being my guest here on Heartreprenuer Radio.

About Andrea Shillington

On a 14-year world tour as an international brand strategist, Andrea developed strategies for fortune 500’s and other famous brands, from the UAE federal government to Astra Zeneca to seven star hotels, all prior to launching brands for the heart. Andrea’s clients call her a Business Soul Architect, because her wisdom, strategic-side and heart combines to create a winning combo that fuses an entrepreneur’s business and with their personal purpose. Andrea is all about making a difference that’s aligned with your soul’s purpose, while delivering a million-dollar brand position for those she serves. Her work has been featured in Entrepreneur, Good, and Springwise to name a few.

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